WHOOP Podcast - Holiday Survival Guide: Strategies for Health and Happiness

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

On this week’s episode WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist Kristen Holmes is joined by WHOOP SVP Research Algorithms, and Data Emily Capodilupo. Kristen and Emily are here to help you take on the Holiday Season. That’s right, this is our Holiday Hacks episode. Kristen and Emily discuss mentally and physically preparing for the holidays (3:16), building a buffer (5:52), how we think about the holidays (8:56), travel optimization strategies (16:32), altitude impacting the body (31:38), late-night meals and late-night drinking (40:43), and banking social energy and showing up (46:10).Follow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramTikTokXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInFollow Kristen HolmesInstagramLinkedInSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. A happy, happy holidays to all, wherever you're listening to this. I'm your host Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP. If you think about joining WOOP, check out WOOP.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial. You can get the full WOOP experience for free. That's WOOP.com. And before we get started, our newest supernet band has now dropped, and that is where

with an up-and-coming footballer named Cristiano Ronaldo. That's right. Sport the number seven, home or away. Declare that super fandom for every match. That is at whoop.com. All right. This week's episode, our global head of human performance, Kristen Holmes, is joined by Woop SVP of Research,

algorithms, and data. Emily Capitalupo, the Fearless Duo, are here to help you, take on the holiday season. That's right. This is our holiday hacks episode, whether you are traveling through the air or on the road, navigating numerous holiday parties,

or worried you might miss your workout routine. This is the episode for you. They discussed preparing your body for the stress of the holidays. You need to build capacity for your immune system and mental health. Handling holiday travel, air travel can be a huge detracture on recovery, circadian health, it, avoiding that extra sweet and drink at holiday parties. It's no secret. The holidays can be hard to stick to your typical nutritional habits and maintaining a positive mental health. That's

right, ensuring you have the right energy to show up for your loved ones. Remind you if you have a question what's the answer on the podcast. Email us, podcast, woup.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here are The Fearless Kristen Holmes and Emily. It's that time of year again. So excited to talk about the holidays with you today. All right. We are going to give our listeners all sorts of fun advice on how to manage the holiday season with, you know, a little bit more joy, really emphasizing connection and kind of how to show up as your best self. There are some unique challenges over the course of the holidays. So we want to acknowledge those and talk through how we can mitigate the negative effects on our mental, physical, and emotional health as much as possible.

So it's really this balance between kind of indulgence and self-care and figuring out how we can best create conditions where we can really thrive during the holidays. So I always like to think about the holidays as like the tournament time, you know, and we're trying to peek for that. So we've got, we're through obviously Thanksgiving and we've got a couple weeks before Christmas and other holidays that folks might be celebrating, just holidays in general. So, you know, if we think about this as like kind of our preparation period for that, what are some things that people can do to kind of position themselves so they're just, ready to go for the holidays. There's so many different ways to think about answering that question. It comes down to, you know, your relationship to the holidays, what it is that you're doing. When I think about, for example, you know, traveling to go see family, maybe traveling that's

stressful or, you know, seeing family that could be stressful or even just people you love and are excited to see, but not necessarily an environment that's like. like super conducive to maintaining your workout and workout schedule, sleeping schedule, eating habits, all of those things tend to get very disrupted this time of year. And so you want to think about like banking some good things, right? Like so can you make a little bit more time for some of that in advance? Some of the work that we did a couple years ago with the COVID resilience project really does show that you can bank some of these benefits. So we saw that like people who maintained good sleep consistency prior to the pandemic when their schedules and lives got like really

stressful and upended during those first six weeks of the pandemic even if their sleep schedule totally went to crap went to craft they actually did better than people who had similar sleep consistency in those first six weeks but worse sleep consistency prior so like good behavior good circadian behavior, sleep consistency now will make you more resilient to the stress of the disruption during the holidays. And so there really is something very real about like bank some of that good stuff. You know, know that, you know, you're going to indulge at your grandma's Christmas Eve dinner. Okay. So like say no, now. You know, there's so many snacks in the office this time of year. There's so many holiday parties. There's so much. I kind of hate to like earn it

mentality, but there is something real there of like, you know, it's not going to throw you as much if you indulge. I don't mind the earnest mentality. Like, I think there's something, you know, real to that. I love what you're saying, though, about this notion that we can actually increase our tolerance for future stress, right? So going into the holidays depleted is probably not a good strategy, right? So there's a lot of things that, a lot of things that we can do in the in the lead up to really allow ourselves to minimize, the impact of that disruption, you know, on our kind of overall state. When you go into the holidays already depleted and then you finally make it there, you know, you're in a situation

where you're probably a lot more vulnerable. So maybe just talk about how, you know, building this capacity and buffer in the system essentially helps our immune system. Because that's another thing. We're interacting with a lot of folks. We're, you know, again, disrupting our you kind of go and already depleted, we're pretty vulnerable. Yeah, and I think people became more and more aware of this over the last, you know, four years with the pandemic and whatnot. But the more you do now, and we still have two weeks, right? And the more you're doing now to hydrate well, to eat well, to rest well,

so that your body goes into that, like, immune assault, which is kind of inevitable, unless you spend your holidays, you know, in the cabin alone or whatever, in your bubble, the less likely you are to get sick. And then even once you're in that environment, continuing to make as many of those good decisions as you can. So alcohol is really going to tax your immune system, make it harder to pipe these things off. Sugar.

Yeah, sugar, which just causes inflammation and whatnot. And I think probably among these, the easiest one is hydrating because it doesn't require saying no to anything that's tempting. So just really make an effort to hydrate. Add two more glasses of water. than you might otherwise think about consuming, especially if you're flying because that air on airplanes is really dehydrating. It's like super dry. But, you know, anything you can do now

going to increase the likelihood. And even if you don't, like, get exposed to a virus, like, there's also just stress to travel. There's circadian disruption. There's kind of the heightened alertness of not being in your own space where you don't, like, fully relax in all of those things. And so just being, like, robust to that stress is going to pay off and make your holidays feel a lot more enjoyable. I love. That's a good little laundry list for folks to think about. So let me see. Moving to, you know, just getting a lot of that, you know, even if it's low-level movement, you know, throughout the day, I think making sure to distribute your macronutrients across the day.

So you get to that holiday party at night and you're not overindulging, you know, you feel like you've already hit. maybe even your protein targets going into that, you know, you're likely to feel, you know, less tempted to, you know, reach for stuff that is, you know, kind of less healthy. And I think the other thing I just add to the pre-game, I suppose, or the buildup to the playoffs, which is the holidays in this analogy, would be to make sure that you're strategic. You know, like I think sometimes we just kind of let the holidays happen to us. And I think that there's a lot to be said in terms of planning, you know, so just really looking at your calendar, what holiday partners do I have? Where am I going to indulge? Where am I not? You know, just to kind

to keep yourself to your point. I think robust is the right word. The other threat I wanted to pull on that you mentioned a bit earlier was this, you know, you said the holiday means different things to different people. You know, so for some folks, it's like the most joyous time of the year. And for other folks, it's, it's not. You know, maybe, you know, someone has a, you know, a loved one who's passed away during the holidays, right? So, or, you know, it's just missing a loved one, you know, during the holidays. So, you know, I think there's also an opportunity to kind of reflect or to think in advance of what do you need to actually feel safe internally, you know, and a lot of the things that we talked about behaviorally helps create that internal safety. But also, you know,

how we are thinking about the holidays and framing it in a way that maybe is more challenging versus threatening, you know? And I wanted to talk a little bit about our study that we did, the sleep stress and blood pressure study, where we're able to look at the independent effects of, you know, when we perceive a situation as threatening versus challenging, that there are like, you know, changes in our physiology, but most importantly, it affects our sleep. And, you know, we talked about sleepway consistency, really building robustness. And that's kind of a path to getting more restorative sleep. But I think restorative sleep and the lead up is also going to be really helpful. So, you know, figuring out what are ways that we can

think about more intentionally and bring a kind of a framework of challenge versus threat? too. So we, you know, are basically going to improve our chance for better sleep. And that's really what we saw in this study is that people who perceive their day as challenging actually had a better night's rest that the previous night versus folks who perceived their day as threatening. Yeah, I'd love to just, there's a little bit of a tangent, but I think such an important point that you're bringing up, which is that appraisal super matters. And I think that it's hard to appreciate this because it's very easy to think like, you know, this thing is hard because that's a fact. It's hard. This isn't something that I've mastered, you know,

or whatever. But your attitude matters a ton. There's this study that I think about all the time as a parent where they randomized a group of, I think they were fifth graders. And for half of the group, they said this math test you're about to take is really hard. Just do your best. and the other half they said this test is super easy you've learned all this material like you've got this and i think there's something like a 30% difference in their performance and it was a totally like is the same like schools fifth graders they broke them in half so they all had exactly the same like education and prep going into it and then just they sit down to the test and one group they say this is hard the other group they say this is easy and their performance wildly

different. So how can we apply that, right, to these situations and, like, think about the elements of the holidays that are like, you know, there's just kind of like corny thing, right? Like, whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right? But it's like true, right? Like, if you focus on the travel's going to suck, there's going to be traffic, I'm going to hate it. Like, the kids are going to be grumpy. Like, confirmation bias kicks in and the travel's going to suck. And if you're just like, I'm going to focus on, I'm so excited this Christmas that my daughter's going to meet her great grandmother for the first time. And that's why we're going to Michigan. And, yeah, it would be so much easier if everybody came to us. But, like, I'm really excited for them to have that. And, like, just, like, reframe. And then nothing else matters because my daughter gets to meet her great grandmother. And you tapped gratitude there, you know, and you kind of brought it outside yourself and you're, you know, you're thinking about your daughter. You know, like, so all of those are important, I think, aspects to the reframe. Yeah. And I think like people kind of know this, right? Because like if it all was shitty, you wouldn't do it. Right. Like you're not traveling for the holidays to torture yourself. And so I think like, you know, we talked about the food and the exercise and the hydration as mental or physical preparation for the holidays.

holidays. But I also think, like, take the moment to, like, hone your mantra a little bit and then just, like, you know, why are you doing this? What are you, what's good? And just try not to, like, focus on the other elements. Plan for them. Be realistic. Like, traffic is going to be heavy. I'll leave an hour earlier, like, whatever it is. But you will turn the travel from, I'm so focused. focused on, like, what a nightmare O'Hare airport is going to be versus I'm so excited, you know, for my daughter to meet her great grandmother. And, like, your whole experience will change the way that, like, we've seen in our data. Like, we ask people what they anticipate for the upcoming day is challenging versus threatening. It was a huge predictor of how well they slept. And so you get to decide how you want to internally talk about your day.

And I think, like, hopefully with very few exceptions, people are going, like, be dragged to travel that they have no, like, excitement about, right? And I think in most cases, it's like, yeah, getting there is a little difficult and the bed's not as comfy as your bed and it's going to be noisy with all the kids running around or whatever, but don't, like, don't make that your mantra and, like, you're, like, what you're thinking about, except that as part of the process and remind yourself why, despite all that, you all agreed that this is the only place we want to be or the best place we want to be for the holidays.

Yeah. I love that. And I think folks need to recognize that. Like, reframing is, like, a really important skill in a path to positive psychological. functional functioning, you know? And it's like we kind of need to practice that. And this is a, there's like, this is a great opportunity, you know, the holidays to really kind of practice this skill of reframing. Because the way you tap too is like there is a, an energy mobilization that's happening when you're reframing that's putting you in a position to be able to enjoy mentally,

physically, create a response that allows you to mentally physically, emotionally enjoy your environment. I love that. And I feel like we haven't really, you know, talked much about that on, on, you know, on the podcast. So I think this is an awesome kind of new type of insight, you know, we got to mix it up because we do this every year. That's exactly right. So hopefully people feel like that's really valuable and something that they can, you know, think more intentionally about, you know, as they head into into the holidays. All right. We've gotten through our little pregame. Well, now we're into actually the pregame. So we're kind of, we've had the two week kind of build up where we're creating, making our system as robust as possible.

And now we're like in the pregame. So we're traveling in a couple of days, either by car or by plane. Talk about, you know, some of the really tactical things that we need to do to kind of be able to, you know, mitigate some of those negative effects. Yeah. So a couple different ways to think about that. And I'll get to the travel and the time zone stuff itself in a second. It's worth taking a moment to do your homework about what is the, like, environment that I'm landing in. Now, for some people, it might be, I'm going, you know, to my parents' house and I know exactly what everything is. It could be we're going to an Airbnb and I don't know or a hotel. Who knows? Whatever. It's worth checking in on, like, if you're going to be sleeping on somebody's couch in the

basement, which, you know, happens. A lot of times people try and squish a lot of family together this time of year, like it might be possible, especially if you're driving or somebody's driving, right, to just make sure, like, you know, do we know that the Airbnb or whatever has like enough or the house that we're going to, like, has enough blankets and pillows and like towels or whatever for however many people we're squishing in there. And you might want to pack some of those things. And then certainly, you know, if you have specific requirements, like, you know, do they have a crib, did they have a high chair, like making sure, like, because you can organize, there are all kinds of, like, kind of rental companies that will bring some of that equipment

in. You can also rent, like, bedding and pillows or whatever, you know, for the weekend. Like, all those companies exist, especially if you're going to big cities. And so just making sure that, like, you will be comfortable because sort of once you get there, especially if it's like Christmas Eve, it's a little bit too late to get new supplies. And so thinking about what are things I can bring that'll make sure that I have good quality sleep, despite potentially, like, less than ideal sleeping arrangements. Beyond that, especially if you're flying, I'd really think about getting a good water bottle that's like at least 32 ounces of, you know, capacity. If you're not flying first class, you know, they're going to come around and give you six ounces of water

two or three times on, you know, flight across the country and it's just not enough. Right. And so, you know, bring an empty water bottle, fill it up in the airport. They're those free refill stations all over the place. And then really, like, even if you're not feeling thirsty, just make a point of, like, you know, your kidneys can process a liter of water an hour. So the risk of overhydrating is pretty non-existent. And you're just losing a lot of water on a flight. You lose so much more water than you realize because you're not moving that much. and you're just sitting there.

It's so damn dry. Yeah, and there's all kinds of funny things. Like airplane food is extremely salty because the dryness actually makes everything taste blander. And so they oversalt the food to, like, give it any amount of flavor. And so you have like that super dry air and super salty food. That's a fun fact, Emily. Nice. Yeah.

Well, so like you're just, you just need to drink so much more water than you think. And a sort of good reminder is by the time you feel thirsty, you're actually quite dehydrated. So you want to drink ahead of thirst, not drink too thirst, and pay attention to the color of your urine. That's, like, a better indicator than thirst. I think of thirst as a very late sign. And your urine getting darker can be an earlier sign, although intermittent. And it's also, in a more extreme case, worth paying attention to, like, if you go a whole six-hour flight without peeing, you're definitely not drinking enough water. Yeah.

So it's both the color of the urine and, like, oh, shit, it's been a long time. which can happen on these flights. But in an even better world, right, you're actually bringing healthy food with you on the plane. Yeah. Likely it's not available at the airport. That's all going to be crap. And you want to think about food that has high water content, which will make it even easier. So like fruit, vegetables, salad.

Try to go into your trip relatively well-fed. I think that's a good, yeah, that's just a good standard operating procedure. so you're not having to rely on airport food or... Right, because then you're eating salty crap and it's like, that's not the stuff you want. You're super hungry. So when they come around with chips, you're like, yeah, I'll have whatever you'll give me. And I think actually that's a, there's a sort of broader holiday hack there around just all of the indulgent crap that's provided to us. If you go into a holiday party where it's basically chips and dips and fried food and whatever, if you've already eaten dinner, then you can,

can have a couple bites as a fun indulgent snack and enjoy it versus like make a whole meal out of, you know, junk because like you're legitimately hungry. And so now you're looking for like a dinner's worth of food. And if you're in those situations, you know, you can think about, all right, I'm going to have the tariaki chicken stick and then I'm going to have the carrots and celery. And, you know, you kind of eat as much of that as you need to to kind of be satiated. And then, you know, and then maybe you pick like one treat or something. You know, But again, a little strategy. I'm a huge fan of having the treats and whatnot.

I read something that I found helpful a while back, which is if you are eating like a chocolate cake or like a delicious dessert, right? Like the first bite's amazing. The second bite is good. The third bite's okay. And then it like is kind of the same from there. And like kind of that mindfulness of like because then you try and chase that like first bite. It's the same with alcohol.

Oh, yeah. But like that first bite moment of like, oh, wow, this is amazing. And then you like eat the whole cake and you're like, I actually like really didn't like need 80% of this. Like I got all the joy at like just that little tip. It's the same with you happy. Like I'm like, I don't need a venti. Like I, you know, like it gets worse as I go. So I'm like, it's really the first half a cup that I'm like really enjoying. And then the rest is kind of like, what am I actually doing here? Yeah. So I think just like, you know, nourishing your body. and then enjoying but like paying attention to like is this first bite joy or not anymore and then like kind of cutting it off there but back to the travel thing I just I'm just going to keep saying hydrate hydrate hydrate you heard it I'll try and stop but um you know the other thing is a lot of people like window seats because they don't like to be bothered um for those longer flights the advantage of an aisle seat is you can get up and you wouldn't feel better if you move a little bit, so, you know, find a moment where the fasten seatbelt sign is turned off and just walk the aisle a little bit. If you can't do that, think about rolling your ankles and if you have enough leg room because you're short like me, you know, you can like wiggle your knees up to your chest, different things, like roll your shoulders. You'll get really stiff If you just sit and like zone out to the TV for six, seven hours, and then you'll feel pretty crummy because of that stiffness, our bodies really do want to move.

Even when we sleep, we move a lot. You know, anybody who's tried to share blankets with anybody. Yeah. You know that. There's definitely an unnaturalness to like, you know, when you're just packed like a sardine in a tiny seat for six hours. So do try and get up every, I know, it's like annoying to disrupt. people. But, you know, every two or three hours, if you can and walk around for a couple minutes. I think, too, like, getting in a workout before you leave, if you know when you land,

like, you're just not going to get an opportunity to work out. Like, I always feel so much better, like, when I get that in before travel. And I, and I definitely like, you know, like, I don't, if I'm, if I'm doing a flight that's over three hours, four hours, like, I typically won't lift. You know, I'll do like a longer kind of zone two type run or just a long walk. And, you know, maybe some abs and, you know, pushups and, you know, and some stretching. But, yeah, I think getting a workout into can make you feel really a lot better in terms of just kind of being able to then lean into just the relaxing and sitting, you know, that can happen on a plane.

It's a great tip, especially a lower intensity workout, could also help you sleep on the plane. Yeah, if the timing is right. Yeah, and that's, we can maybe segue into that and then have a really great listener question from Jamie. that's a it's a good one about altitude but before we get into that if we're landing let's say in California or even if we're going from the east coast to the Midwest you know there is a time zone change so we want to think about all right am I going am I acclimatizing to my new time zone generally the holidays you are because you're not going to be wanting to go to bed yeah you know

at 6 p.m. when you're in California right you're going to stay up so you're going to be pushing past your natural preference for sleep so there is an opportunity to potentially be a little more strategic with your caffeine consumption, for example. Maybe you have a green tea at 1 p.m., you know, East Coast time, which is really 4 p.m. West Coast time, and that's going to help you kind of stay up a little bit later than you normally would. You know, so you can kind of think about your caffeine in a way that will help you be able to kind of climatize the new time zone a bit better.

Yeah, so let's take the example. if you're in Boston like us or anywhere on the East Coast and you're going to the West Coast. So it's three hours earlier there. So that means that at, say, when you're there in California time, 10 p.m. will feel like 1 a.m. And for social family reasons, you're going to want to be able to stay up until 10. So having a little bit of caffeine at lunch, even though generally I would say no caffeine. after lunch, you want to think about, like, on your travel day, doing things according to California time, not according to East Coast time.

And so, you know, 1 p.m. West Coast is going to be 10 a.m. Right, is a 10 a.m. coffee, West Coast, fair game, and actually a good idea. It'll help you stay up a little bit later. If you avoid alcohol that night, it'll also make it a little bit easier to stay up, obviously because alcohol can make you sleepy. And it can definitely help to nap on that flight because, again, that's going to relieve some of the sleep pressure and make it easier to stay up. And that'll make it really easy to get on to West Coast time.

Right. Let's say now you're doing the opposite, right? You live in California. You're coming home to Boston for the holidays. So now I would say, you know, really be careful about the coffee because if you're flying at 9 a.m., okay, that's already noon, East Coast time. So you want to get that caffeine in early if you need it. But you're going to be trying to go to bed earlier than feels natural, which is harder to adjust to than later because we have great. We're kind of good at like having a little bit of caffeine, taking a little nap and staying up three hours late.

It's really hard to go to bed three hours earlier than your body wants. This actually, especially if you're in holiday mode, could be a place where alcohol helps. Yeah, it'll be a little bit sleepier. really making sure That's where melatonin can be a great strategy. But so can things like you're making sure as early as possible when you wake up on that

travel days. You wake up on the West Coast and it's already later. Like get that morning sunlight in, you know, tell your body we're up. Even getting up a little bit early can help. And this gets back to your other tip. Get up early and get that run in. Which will make the flight more comfortable

and help build that sleep pressure. So if you can wake up a little early on the travel day, then when... Going to East Coast is so good, yeah. So then it's like 10 p.m. on the East Coast when you land, but it feels like 7 p.m. which is super not bedtime, but you got up early, you exercised. You didn't sleep on the plane. And then maybe, you know, right before bed, if you want to have a little melatonin, if you want to have a holiday drink, I'm not watching.

Like in joy, and then when you wake up that first morning that you're waking up in your new time zone, get that morning sunlight as early as possible. Three hours is like kind of on the edge if you can feel fine the second morning or like after the first sleep in either direction. When you start to go beyond that, it does take, you know, another day. But the more you can just create strong signals to your body about what the time zone you're in is, So that's morning, sunlight, you know, wearing blue light blocking glasses in the evening or dim light after sunset, eating according to the new time, though, not doing weird things like, you know, eating breakfast at 11. And you can even in the couple days in advance of your travel, you can start to shift

slightly, you know, your meal time, shift your exercise time slowly, shift your light exposure, restricting, you know, that will actually make you feel sleepy. Maybe if you're going, you know, west coast, east coast, and you want to feel sleepy a little bit earlier. You just kind of back everything up when you're on the West Coast, you know? Yeah. And that can work. Sometimes it's socially or work-wise a little difficult, but the physiology of that super sound, right? So if you're... We're just talking maybe a half an hour here and there. You know, not egregious, you know, big blocks of time necessarily, but just a little bit could be helpful. Yeah. I mean, even an hour can make it more comfortable. So if it works for you,

right, two days before the travel, you could try to go to bed an hour earlier and wake up, an hour earlier. And again, use the morning sunlight morning exercise to reinforce that. And then the night before, you know, you do it again. And then now you're functionally only trying to do like a two hour time. Right. Right. So you can cheat a little bit if that works with your schedule. But that's almost like preloading or front loading the July. Yeah. And the older that we get, like the more sensitive we are from a circulating rhythm standpoint. So, you know, I think for that's also just something to be mindful of and just an opportunity to be a little more strategic so you can minimize some of that disruption. So when you do get your new time zone, you're not as

compromised as maybe you normally would be. And you can really just, you know, enjoy the moment. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. Okay, let's go to this question because it's really, it's kind of a juicy question. So it's from Jamie, and it's about air travel and traveling to altitude. Hey, whoop team.

Every Christmas, I fly back home to Colorado. And the past two years that I have had my whoop, I always see major hits to my sleep, HRV and resting heart rate. I know you have spoken about altitude impacting data on a podcast before, but would love any insights you have on, you know, what is happening, what the cause is, and how I can maybe combat it. I've lived in New York for the last six years since growing up in Colorado my whole life, has my body forgotten my mile high roots. Jamie's definitely not alone in this one. It's remarkably easy to, like, unadapt to altitude. But it happens pretty quickly. It happens pretty quickly. Yeah. And thankfully, most people adapt pretty quickly as well. But what's going on is that the higher up you go,

they say like the thinner the air and what they really mean is that for a given volume of air let's say a breath worth there's actually less oxygen in it and so in order to power our body oxygen is like fuel um i know we talk about sort of sugar being fuel but sugar enables or sorry oxygen enables us to access the energy from sugar so you have to pair them um so for a given breath you get less oxygen, but our body still needs to do all of the same amount of things. And so what ends up happening is that we increase our respiratory rate. We breathe more to compensate for each breath being less oxygen-rich. Our heart rates go up in order to circulate our blood past this less oxygen-rich air in our lungs.

And all of a sudden, we're working significantly harder just for the baseline level of being alive. homeostasis. Yeah. And we're sympathetically driven. Yeah, right. So you kind of go into this, like it's almost like you're constantly low grade working out. Yeah. And the fitter you are, the less you're going to notice this because the more capacity you have, right? The way to sort of think about this is there are people who can walk briskly and carry a full conversation, you know, complete paragraphs. And there are people that when they're walking briskly, all of a sudden, and the pauses get longer. The sentences become like three, four words.

You can like kind of hear their breathing, right? And so it's like the people who can like maintain those brisk walks with full sentences, those people have higher VO2 max, higher aerobic capacity. And so when they go to altitude, they're now like using more of that capacity, but they might not necessarily feel anything or notice it because they're fit enough to. And so as you get older and potentially less fit, you're going to feel that altitude more because all of a sudden your body, you know, kind of increases its metabolic rate in order to meet this new demand. And either you sort of start to get into that place where, oh, I notice everything feels a little harder and like I'm breathing more heavily and the stairs are like, oh, right?

I remember the first time I went to Colorado Springs in high school. I landed and felt like totally normal, totally fine. And my sister and I were like, let's go for a run. And we were like got down one blog. We were like, oh, whoa, we need to slow down. This feels different. And we adjusted. And after a couple days, like, you feel fine.

And it's totally comfortable. But going from sea level to Colorado Springs, like over a mile. of elevation and yeah, exercising definitely feels different. And it's really, there's not a lot of ways to prepare for that. No, I mean, there's like fancy equipment where they're like training in the hyperbaric options, but not like normal things. Yeah. So there's actually a ton of Olympic athletes like intentionally train at altitude because

then they come down to sea level and they get the opposite experience. Right. Everything feels easy. The weights feel lighter, all that kind of stuff. so so for jamie they're just going to have to just take the hit on their their resting physiology yeah but as your body is working harder you're actually going to burn more calories and so think about eating a little bit more than normal and you know because you are working hard thinking about high quality nourishing food uh i think sometimes what happens is like people get hungrier

and which makes them snack more, right? And so then they fill that increased hunger, increased nutritional need with junk, and that makes it harder to adapt. You're also going to consume more water to meet that increased demand. Basically, you'll think about it almost as metabolically getting a bit more exercise, even if you're not intentionally doing that. So more water, more food, try and make that more food nutritious. And then again, like, you know, Jamie's talking about noticing the disruption to sleep.

That's because it is counterproductive to sleep for us to be working hard. And so our bodies don't want to both be increasing our heart rate, increasing our respiratory rate, and turning off her sleep. And so from a autonomic nervous system perspective, it's very confusing. And so anticipate that your sleep quality will be lower, which you can compensate by, creating a longer sleep opportunity so that the lower quality sleep, you can get more of it. And then you kind of eventually get the same number of minutes of restorative sleep. And then just all of the other things that promote sleep, right? So practice good circadian health.

Yeah. Some slow-paced breathing I find when I'm at altitude really helps. Just focus on like just nice, quiet breaths, you know, kind of makes me feel calmer. And I think because your system is essentially it's trying to get back to a safe place. place, you know, and that's why it's – but it has to work so hard to get back to that. Right, because physiologically, the adaptation is that we make more red blood cells. And so then our blood gains the ability to carry more oxygen. And so once that happens, you know, everything – the air is still thinner, but we're physiologically better prepared to handle it.

But in the meantime, it's perceived as a stress, right? Your body's sort of confused why it's working so hard to get the same. And so when you're talking about like slow-paced breathing, right, that's intentional de-stressing. And loop does have those breathing exercises in the app that you can use if you're a Woot member or you can do something like Fox breathing or any other kind of. And you find those via stress monitor. Yeah. And the stress monitor feature and then you'll see the breathing exercises at the bottom. But in the meantime, you know, if your body is going to be making these more red blood cells, that's also going to create a demand for iron.

So really thinking about super high quality. quality food and iron retrieves as well. So like spinach and spinach, kale, those like green leafy vegetables, red meat is a good source of iron. A lot of beans have good amounts of iron. If you're somebody who's more at risk or if you know that you have ever been told by your doctor that you're anemic, potentially taking an iron supplement, although it's worth being aware that those can be constipating, which air travel is as well. And so I want to be extra careful about hydrating well. And then just thinking, yeah, again, being, you know, at altitude, just being pretty

strategic about alcohol because that will, you know, you're already, it will hit you really, really hard. So, you know, just maybe be a bit more conscious of the timing of your alcohol relative to when you intend to fall asleep. Obviously, the closer the alcohol is to when you fall asleep, the more disruptive to your sleep it's going to be and the more impact it's going to have on your resting physiology. Yeah.

That's actually a really important, just public safety announcement. too that if you're not adapted to alcohol, the effects are a lot stronger. So obviously, you should never drink and drive. But I think a lot of people unfortunately have this idea of like, I can have a beer and then like drive home from dinner or whatever. But expect it to hit you harder. And even more so, please don't. Jet lagged, altitude, you know, all of those things are going to, alcohol is going to exacerbate those symptoms and make you more compromised cognitively. So, yeah, just being really aware during the holidays about the impact that that's actually having. Because we can't always, we can't perceive our own declines cognitively.

So it's important that we're really aware of just the interaction between, you know, these various kind of situations. All right. So we have another listener question, and this is from Christina, some of my favorite topics. But we talked a little bit about alcohol, but she's really wondering, kind of this, she's really pitting off, you know, the late meals and late night drinks, kind of which one is worse. Her instinct is that late meals really, and what she sees in her data is that late meals really impact her resting physiology, but so does alcohol. So which one is kind of worse on the body, a late meal or a late night drink? And does one impact the other more than, than, and does which one kind of impact sleep the most?

Alcohol is definitely the bigger impact on sleep. We actually, we just looked at all of this data as part of the year in review process. But alcohol was the number one, worst thing across the entire Woot member base. On average, it reduced your recovery score, I think, by about 13%. That's right. And late meal, I think, was close to 6%. With alcohol, like close to bedtime in particular, it's going to disrupt your sleep for a couple of reasons. One, you know, it's a poison.

It puts your liver into this like detox mode. We drive a tremendous amount of resources towards getting that alcohol out of our bodies. And that's counterproductive to recovery to activate that whole process. alcohol then breaks down into sugar. And so once we successfully get rid of the alcohol, we've turned it into sugar. And so now our blood sugar is spiking, which is also very activating and counterproductive to good quality sleep. And so when you drink, say, during the day, you're moving.

And so you burn that sugar. If you drink and then go to bed, there's sort of nowhere for that to go. And so you just end up with high blood sugar at night, which, you know, you know, causes more sleep disruptions and more health challenges. Increases your heart rate. Yeah, creates inflammation and the heart rate. Now, late meal is kind of the same issue, right? We're supposed to fuel our activity. And there are very real active processes that are happening at night, but our metabolic rate when we're sleeping is lower than it is during the day. You know, again, like you take in all

this sugar and your body has to go and figure out what to do with it. And that's an activating process when during sleep you mostly want to be deactivating. The reason why this question is fun, but also challenging, is that at the end of the day, whether or not it's a, you know, wine or a martini or whatever, like the alcohol is alcohol. With a late meal, it's not all the same. So if sugar is the biggest part of the problem, and, you know, let's say you get in super late, you know, they didn't feed you well on the plane or whatever, like you're hungry. So it's 10 o'clock at night and your choices are kind of like, I could go to bed hungry or I could eat and then go to bed.

So the way to like make a late meal not just a total recovery killer is don't eat more than like you need to get out of hunger, right? This isn't the time to like feast and focus on high quality fat with some protein and try and have as few, especially like, you know, high glycemic. index, like fast carbs as possible because that's just going to spike your blood sugar and make it really hard to fall asleep and then to get good quality sleep. And so a late meal doesn't have to be a horrible thing. The problem is, you know, you get somewhere at 10 o'clock at night, the places that tend to serve healthy food tend to not be open at 10 o'clock at night. So you go on Uber eats, you see what's available, right? You get like a burger and fries delivered or something like that. Or somebody's like, oh, I'll just like, you know, your home and it's like, I'll have a bowl of cereal,

I'll have bagel, right? It's like the stuff that like takes five minutes to make because you're tired, you're hungry. Like, this isn't the time where you're like thinking about like, oh, I'll go, like, fire up the grill and make a steak. I just like don't think about doing that at 10 o'clock at night. And so really thinking about how your choices matter. And I think that we oversimplify things when we just say like late meals are recovery killers. A huge part of that is the types of food people tend to choose and, to be fair, have available to them super late are not foods that are conducive to great sleep. And so I generally don't think it's a great idea to go to bed really, really hungry because

that's also disruptive to sleep and low blood sugar during sleep and be a problem. And that's generally an indication that you just have not had sufficient amount of calories in the right macronutrient distribution across the day. So that's, you should not be really, adults shouldn't generally feel hungry unless you're doing double sessions like before bed, right? So it's, yeah. Maybe it's your environment. Maybe you made bad decisions, not trying to blame anybody for anything.

But like you arrive at this situation regardless of how you got there. It's 10 p.m. and you're hungry. Like there are better and worse choices you can make at that point versus like. Yogurt that has 20 grams of protein, you know, a serving like would be a great option. Throwing some walnuts like honey, some raspberries, boom. You're good to go. And that's not going to disrupt your sleep. Yeah.

And I think like eating in a really mindful. way. Like, get out of hunger and then stop. Yeah, perfect. All right, Emily, this is a final question. And this one's great because I think we talked a little bit about stress and just positive reframing for positive psychological functioning. So I love that we've kind of hit on those. Adam sends us a great question. He's an introvert. As an introvert, I can absolutely relate to this. Hoping you can help out an introvert that needs to manage attending multiple holiday parties this year. I don't want to come off as antisocial, but sometimes I just don't have it in me to make all the commitments for my family and friends. And this year, I'm going to my girlfriend's family house for Christmas for the very first time.

And I'm nervous about making a bad impression. Do you have any tips on how to bank some of that social energy and how to try to quickly replenish? Well, I can speak just from personal experience and just what I understand about, you know, extroverts and introverts. I think generally, so when we think about this just from kind of first principles, extroverts are going to really derive a lot of mental, physical, and emotional energy from social interactions, whereas introverts really have less tolerance, right? And need a certain kind of special type of conditions in order for those same social engagements to feel restorative and replenishing, right?

It just doesn't fill their cup in the same way. So I think for introverts, if we kind of think back to like the banking principle, this absolutely, I think, applies for introverts going into these social, you want to just make sure that you are not depleted going into these social engagements as much as possible. And, you know, just, you know, what I would do I take my dog for a walk. by myself, you know? And, and I think it's, it's okay to create these boundaries, you know, and it's okay to just be like, hey, I'm going to step outside and grab some fresh air and just

go for a five to 10 minute walk. And that can be enough to kind of get yourself re-centered, become replenished, you know, mentally and physically and emotionally. And so you can kind of go back into a social situation with a bit more energy and a bit more presence. So I think taking those many breaks throughout are really important. You know, maybe just literally spending a little extra time in the bathroom, like being mindful in those moments, like just taking time washing your hands. I know it sounds like so silly, but these are literally things that I do, you know, you know, if part of your routine, you know, is working out. Like I know for me, I generally work out kind of by myself. And, you know, I think in holiday situations, like maybe that's a great

time to actually work out together. But maybe for you, as an introvert, like you want to actually go on that run solo, you know, and just be, you know, kind of plan and carve out that time. Maybe it means you wake up a little bit earlier. So before you even gauge anyone in the house, you've already had some of that loan time where, again, you're kind of building up that energy. Yeah. I think I go back a little bit to two things. One is, you know, we started by talking about a appraisal. And so really focusing on reminding yourself and centering yourself before these, what will be admittedly, like a lot of probably intense social interactions. And I don't know if this is the first time you're meeting the family. Like that comes with pressure. So really focus on

the positives and why you're excited about the trip. And then I think like, you know, every healthy relationship has boundaries. And if you aren't in the practice of setting those, like this is good practice. Yeah. And so really think about how you can create that space. And I think a lot of times people don't even realize, like, it feels so scary and stressful, but it can almost, like, one, like, people don't want the pressure of entertaining you from sun up to sundown all day long.

And so it could be nice for the family that, like, you demonstrate a comfort with independence. You know, it's something that I would definitely talk to your girlfriend about, like, will I offend anybody if X, Y, Z, right? Like, even if you're not in the habit of exercising, you know, you can just say something like, you know, I really want to make an effort while I have the week off of work to try and get a little bit of exercise every day. You know, is this, you know, can I carve this out and enlist your girlfriend's help in like setting and adhering to this. boundary and creating that space. I think having some centering me time, like you said, in the morning is really powerful. And also think about, you know, there are probably places where you can be the family hero while getting your solo time, right? You can offer to go do the coffee run in the morning. Yeah. Like, I'm going to go pick up breakfast. Or the milk's low. Hey, I'm going to run the grocery stores. Yeah. I know. I'm going to go run out and get it. Do you need anything? And

Now of a sudden, like, you're the hero and protecting everybody's time or, you know, volunteer to do the dishes while everyone else is a little bit. You can, like, find these little moments where it doesn't have to feel like, oh, I'm getting away from you or anything like that, which might feel harder. And instead is like, oh, my goodness, like, your new boyfriend is so helpful, like, so wonderful. You know, those moments you can look for and create. But I also think, like, in a healthy relationship, like, it's important to be able to be able to to say to your girlfriend, like, I'm so excited to meet your family or spend time with your family, but, like, hopefully you know I'm an introvert.

And, like, can you help me carve this time out in the morning here, like, things that I'm going to really need? Because if you, quote unquote, selfishly, and it's not selfish, but for some people, it's, like, easier to think about it that way, if you, like, selfishly take that time in the morning and, like, center yourself, you're going to show up in a way that you're so much happier with and your gas takes kind of already full before you even enter the day full for you you know what it means to be full for you and and then like you're going to be more joyful right somebody whose tank is empty is usually not that pleasant to be around and um and then like you're

losing and they're losing so you know do less beautifully right instead of trying to do everything and then the other thing for holiday parties because there can definitely be a lot and it can feel like, you know, the entire from Thanksgiving to the year, it's like, party after party, this is a little bit more complicated when you're, like, staying at your in-law's house. But, like, in general, it's okay to set a boundary that, like, I leave all parties at nine. If you're there for an hour and a half, like, you've done your job. And, you know, I think, like, people aren't going to be, hopefully, aren't going to be mad at you and it's not rude to then, like, take what you need and go.

And so I think sometimes people get so all or nothing. Like, I don't want to go to that party. It's going to go until 2 a.m. And it's like, well, like, are they locking you in a room? Is it like on a boat where you can't get off? Like, if it's an office holiday party, like you can leave at 9.m. You can even leave it like seven. So, you know, show up, like, be present, enjoy as much as you can and, you know, celebrating with everybody.

And then when you start to feel your tank getting low, give yourself permission to say, See you on Monday. I'm out of here. And if you don't like constantly drain yourself, then it's much easier to kind of turn it around and do it again. And you can actually start to really enjoy it because there are a lot of things that are fun for an hour and not fun for five. So go do the hour, enjoy it, and then give yourself permission to leave. Amazing. Perfect. Well, this has been such a fun conversation. I hope our listeners can take away some. some nuggets and truly make this a rewarding and special holiday season. Yeah, happy holidays, everybody. Yeah, happy holidays. Big thank you to Kristen and Emily for all their tips on how to hack the holidays. Whoop everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.

Reminder, check out the all-new Cristiano Ronaldo, home and away supernet bands. That's atroop.com. You can sign up for a free trial. Also at Whoop.com. If you enjoyed this episode of The Wooop podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at WOOP, at Will Ahmed, at Kristen underscore Homes, 2126. If you have a question, what's he answered? Podcast at Woop.com.

Call us 508-443-4952. New members can use the code Will to get a $6 credit on WOOP accessories. You enter the code at checkout. All right, that's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. Have an amazing holiday season. We'll catch you next week on the Woot Podcast. Stay healthy and stay in the green.

Thank you.